BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen

Subject: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 12 Jan 11 - 01:19 PM

An ex-MP gets six months for fiddling his expenses of £20,000 while the boss of Lloyds legally gets a £2,000,000 bunus.
It rather like the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance.
Where's the justice?

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Jan 11 - 02:13 PM

Justice isn't. It's a concept, not a reality. There are relatively few rich people in jail. We keep our prisons for people who can't afford the better lawyers.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 04:24 AM

It baffles me why these bankers are all so greedy, how much money do they want ? they already have to last a lifetime and still they want more, they can't possibly spend it all, there isn't enough time.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: gnu
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 06:52 AM

Perhaps they are not getting all the money. Perhaps it is being spent on bullets to kill very poor people in far away lands.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 08:23 AM

Dave Hanson, they cannot possibly have enough to last a lifetime, since they have to invest it - and who can be sure to get any of it back, given nowaday's financial system with those greedy bankers?

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 09:00 AM

Bankers bonus's are for themselves, no need to invest any of it, the boss of Lloyds is getting over 2 million quid this year, on top of his pay packet, if he can't make that last a few years he's a bigger twat than we all think anyway.

The top bankers get [ I won't say earn ] more money in one year than most people will earn in a lifetime, for fucks sake how much do they want ?

The greed of the top bankers knows no bounds.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 10:23 AM

How many people, if doing a job paying £1,000 per month, would say no when offered a pay rise to £2,000 per month?
After that, it just becomes a matter of scale.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 01:09 PM

I'm sure they'd say yes but they'd be struggling on £1000 per month so another £1000 would help buy life's necessities let along a few luxuries. You can't just multiply the high and the low here: it all becomes disproportionate. Does anyone really need another 2 million? All they can do is buy more and more of the same.
A while ago there was the rather naive cry 'make poverty history'. Now I'm fairly ignorant when it comes to financial matter but, as there's only so much money to go around, so I am told, I think you have to make extreme wealth history first. However I don't see much evidence of the churches banging on about that as they are mostly concerned about the easier 'sin' of sex. In the case of the C of E, it may well be that its head is a symbol of greed herself.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: Slag
Date: 13 Jan 11 - 09:56 PM

When you have enough money to meet your basic needs, that defines your baseline. Above that comes wants and desires. When you have enough money to invest it's like having a person to work for you, a slave if you will. If you have a large enough investment to meet your basic needs you are well off. When you have enough money to control the money-making enterprise you might be considered rich.   "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand." F. Scott Fitzgerald

The more wealth the more power and the more power, the more wealth. The thing feeds itself. How much do they want? All of it. And why? How should I know, I'm not rich, at least not in that manner. I don't want the power or the responsibility. I 'm rich in other ways, in better ways. Riches are external to a man and someone who has devoted his life to money has nothing inside except greed and lust. I can't relate to that. If you tend to who you are, to your virtues and honor, creativity and art, to your family and relationships you will have a wealth that most of the rich cannot know in much the same way we cannot know them. They can pretend to all the virtues but their quest to dominate is everything to them.

Just be sure your bottom line is not something you can assign a dollar sign to.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 04:38 AM

Just out of interest, the original post compared fiddling expenses with being paid a bonus. Whatever the rights and wrongs of paying out such bonuses, I fail to see the comparison with criminal activity?    Also, and I know this is not always a popular fact to point out... bonuses are taxed so most of it ends up paying for public services anyway. If the money stayed within the bank, it would be squirrelled away where the tax man can't get it.

Perversely, paying out bonuses is one way of clawing it back.

Now... the amounts being paid are obscene. Not through politics of envy, but because those who got us in this mess seem as ever to be those recovering first. They just don't get it. Me? For every banker who threatens to go abroad if the government curbs his or her excesses, I would consider it good investment of public funds to pay for their one way air ticket. You will find that as finance is international anyway, something else keeps them here, and that is wanting to live in london.

Mind you, I am stereotyping a bit here. The country is recovering, yet everybody feels threatened. Why is that? The FTSE is sky high, interest rates should be lower to reflect the base rate and manufacturing output is climbing each month.

Oh, politics. I forgot.

The Tory government have an idealogical aversion to bloated public services, so are using the coffers as an excuse to push their agenda.

I too hate bloated public services, but I draw the line at what this lot are doing. If the level of public expenditure was maintained but targeted better, (not easy, I know) the quality of life would improve across the board.

Whether that would address greed and envy, I doubt it. Whether the private sector can go further and reduce the deficit, I also doubt it.   Whether Ed Milliband has an alternative yet, I doubt it.

Bit of a bugger all round really.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 05:29 AM

Willie, the original quote probably refers indeed to a criminal activity - armed robbery - being compared to the unwary being ripped off by legal contracts all drawn up by lawyers and 'sold' to them by slick salesmen. Woody Guthrie was turning Pretty Boy Floyd into a Robin Hood figure and camparing him indeed to the bankers and the big land owners.
My son, aged 18 and at university, was sold such a slick package quite legally by his bank when he opened a students' account: for monthly fee he could insure his belongings (they are already covered by our house insurance), join the AA (he doesn't have a car) and several other items he neither needed nor wanted. The salesperson made a small fee for herself and this was her only consideration rather than what was in my son's best interest. But he accepted this offer because it was from a bank and, because of his inexperience, he trusted banks so it must have been good.
Of course it is nowhere near as traumatic to be ripped off by a bank as being robbed at gun point but the financial result may be well have been the same.
What is or isn't legal has nothing to do with what is morally right or wrong - and the rich and powerful make the laws, as has been pointed out above. The cheating MP robbed us of peanuts compared with the vast bankers' bonuses. Where is the greatest evil?
The small time builder 'backpockets' the £100 cash he was given for a job, doesn't declare it to the Revenue and commits the offence of tax evasion. A very rich man transfers a few million pounds to his wife who is resident in a tax haven so avoids tax quite legally. Where's the greatest evil?
Of course the big bonuses are taxed (we think) and the rich man employs a lot of people. But do we really want to live it a society which tolerates such behaviour because the rich incidentally do some good. As was said above there are very few rich people in prison.
Perhaps I'm being cynical in wondering if our masters in making an example of a few cheating and quite dispensible MP's were an attempt to divert out attention from the bankers.

Subject: RE: BS: Six gun & Fountain Pen
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 09:09 AM

Doc John, it certainly is a criminal activity, theoretically punishable in most countries ("embezzlement"), for a manager to maximize her/his expected bonus by imposing unreasonable risks to the shareholders or creditors. In cases of "too big to fail", taxpayers are victims as well.

A manager's duty is defined in her/his contract. A bonus can never map sound and successful management exactly, it is only meant as an additional incentive.